


Fluent in Finch

by MasterOfAllImagination



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 21:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10839693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: John isn't quite yet a native speaker, but he's getting there.





	Fluent in Finch

“Mr Reese,” Finch says, making a beeline for the still-steaming tea waiting on his desk. “Kindly remove your shoes from my work space.”

With a sidelong look, Reese complies. They regard one another for a moment before Reese stands and gives up the chair as well. “Do we have a new number?” he asks.

“No, as a matter of fact. I’m here to catch up on some nonessential digital maintenance. Why are _you_ here?”

Reese shrugs. He hasn’t gone far, leaning his thigh up against the desk and resting an elbow lightly on one of the raised monitors. “Just some nonessential gun maintenance,” he says. “Mind if I join you?”

Wordlessly, Finch makes a gesture that says, _I suppose, if you must._ But the mildness in his eyes says, _your company is welcomed_.

Every new gesture of Finch’s that Reese has managed to catalogue feels like building up the vocabulary of a foreign language. Reese is varying degrees of fluent in seventeen, so he should know. Interpreting Finch’s pitch is like listening for syllabic stress in Mandarin. Counting where the hesitations fall in his speech is like puzzling out sentence structure. And every master of each new characteristic is a special victory in itself: finding out that Finch readjusting his glasses means _mildly surprised_ had felt like being in the eleventh grade and speaking fluently with a native French speaker for the first time.

Reese disassembles, cleans, and re-loads a third of his arsenal, even upgrading the scope on a rifle that had been giving him sighting issues a few nights back; all the while running through vocabulary exercises in his head. Conjugations: the different ways Finch’s mouth can twitch. Nominative, accusative, and dative cases: the situational circumstances which cause Finch’s inflection to change when he calls him _Mr. Reese_.

The process takes a paltry two hours. When he looks out of the renovation-plastic-blocked windows, the light has brightened slightly, but otherwise, it is as if the library is still suspended in early morning. Finch has not moved, although his tea no longer steams. A faint crease now sits between his brows.

“Thought you said _nonessential_?” Reese asks, the first sound spoken between them in hours. Finch glances up shortly, as if startled, but Reese cannot be sure. _Startled_ is not a dialect Reese is yet familiar with.

“I did say nonessential, Mr. Reese, meaning not strictly necessary. The definition does not denote expediency. I believe there is a thesaurus two shelves up on your left if you require further clarification.”

Short and to the point: Finch when he’s annoyed. He wishes there were a thesaurus that could tell him more than merely the synonyms of _nonessential_. What, for example, the antonym of _annoyance_ is in the language of Finch.

He stows the last of his guns away—behind the atlases in the oversized collection—and sidles up to Finch softly, not wanting to evoke further exasperation, but curious; curious. And Finch’s eyes flick briefly to him before returning to his work. Coming to stand behind his chair, Reese asks, “Can I help?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

Bank accounts open and close before he can ascertain more than an alias. Stocks trade hands, investments are made, emails sent that will trigger phone calls which will in turn trigger policy change in some far-off holding of Finch’s, although of what name and of what nature Reese is at a loss to guess. He doesn’t mind not being able to guess. The dance of electronic lives and aliases on the screen is like a movie: detached and unconnected to the Finch before him, the Finch whose knuckles will faintly crack in his left hand if it is very cold and he has been working late, or whose hair is always neatly trimmed, despite Reese never having seen him step foot in a barber’s in the six months of their working relationship.

“There must be something I can help with,” Reese protests after a while.

Finch clicks on something that makes six decimal places appear and disappear. “Perhaps Detective Carter could use your help. A chance for you to return her favors.”

“I dunno, Finch. It’s not quite the same when they’re already dead.” Purposefully, Reese drifts around the chair to Finch’s right, so that when he looks up at him—and he _knows_ he will look up at him—he will have to twist his whole torso in order to avoid straining his mysterious neck injury.

“Now you’re just being obstinate, Mr. Reese,” Finch says, and Reese smiles because he’s right. “Do you complain just to hear the sound of your own voice?”

 _Just to hear the sound of yours_. Contrarily, Reese presses his lips together and shakes his head. The huff of annoyance as Finch turns back to his work is reward enough. “Go help Carter.” Finch’s eyes don’t leave the screen.

“Okay,” Reese says. He takes his coat from the peg and goes.

 

For someone of whom Reese has slowly begun to think of as a firm ally, Carter still pulls off a very effective hands-on-hips _this had better be good_ as she stalks towards him. Reese puts up his hands. “Relax, Carter. I’m unarmed.”

“That doesn’t reassure me,” she says sourly, looking him up and down. “What are you doing here? I’ve got my own mess to deal with this morning. I don’t have time to help clean yours up, too.”

He touches a hand briefly to his sternum. “Why, Carter. I’m hurt. I thought you _liked_ helping me.”

From several feet away, a cop calls to Carter, one of the many milling around a cordoned-off brownstone. She waves him off and looks back to Reese with impatience in her posture, half-turned to the house and half-turned towards him, a line drawn parallel. “Sorry, John, it’s just—been a long morning.”

He nods. “Figured as much. Thought you might appreciate some help.”

“ _Help?_ ”

He nods again.

“Well, that’s—uh—“ The cop calls to her again, and she waves him off a second time; a vague impatient twitch. “You know what? We can use all the help we can get. Got a 911 call around one-thirty this morning; something about jackhammering on the street, but when a unit finally got here, turned out to be automatic weapons fire instead of roadwork. We’ve got eight bodies plastered to what’s left of the walls, no prints, no motive, and no leads.”

Reese takes a deep breath. Winter’s sting still lingers in New York, trapped by smog and tall buildings, pushing down his throat and waking him up like a dousing of cold water. “Whatever you need.”

Carter’s smile opens hesitantly, a butterfly fluttering its wings that then takes off into the air.

 

Reese heads back to the library the long way round and waits to finish hanging his coat before accosting Finch. For some reason, he likes to have his hands free when he talks to Finch.

“Still working?”

“Clearly.”

“I’ve got a job for you,” Reese says, letting his lips stretch slightly as he says the words, so strange and unfitting of his own mouth when directed at his boss.

Finch pushes back the chair slightly and resettles his glasses on his nose. “Oh? Something to do with Carter’s multiple homicides?”

“You told me to help. I’m helping.”

“Looks as though _I’m_ helping,” Finch points out reasonably.

“We’re both helping. Got something better to do?”

He regards the computers with some acerbity: a finger taps against the armrest. _Considering_ , Reese translates, with very little mental effort at all. “I suppose not.”

“Good.”

 

They work the case. They trace bullet casings to guns, guns to a dead-end of filed-off serial numbers, and redirect to trace the money. They re-route again when the money splinters into seventy-two different bank accounts, and they sit for a while, pondering. Reese takes down a book from the shelves and pages through it, unseeing; Finch stares straight through his keyboard. A sudden flurry of keystrokes pulls Reese back to his side.

The accounts all share the common denominator of belonging to plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against a housing baron, claiming everything from rent fixing to bedbugs.

“They all chipped in,” Reese says softly. “But instead of buying the boss a gift, they bought themselves a hit man. And not a very good one.”

“Looks like it.” Straight-backed, Finch glances to Reese. “Why don’t you inform our dear detective that she may need some backup on this one.”

Reese dials one-handedly so that he can use the other to briefly clasp Finch’s forearm. “Thanks, Finch.” The dial tone cuts out and Carter answers curtly in his ear. “I’m about to make your day,” Reese says to her.

" _What have you got for me? Wait, hold on.”_ On the other end comes the sound of a chair scraping back and rapid steps. Reese looks over to Finch, who is shrugging back his cuff to check the time. It’s ticking close to six, but in the effervescent library light, it doesn’t mean much. He covers the speaker and mouths to Finch: _Curry or Thai_?

Twisting his lips, Finch murmurs, “Chinese.” While Carter is scurrying away to a more secluded spot to take Reese’s call, Finch Google Maps a place they haven’t visited in a while and puts in an online order for takeout.

 _“I’m here_ ,” Carter says, and Reese looks away from Finch.

“Trague Properties,” Reese says.

_“That all you got?”_

“That’s all you need.”

_"I’ll look into it. And thanks.”_

“Don’t mention it.” The phone is halfway back to his pocket before he hangs up. Sometimes he forgets that Finch is the only one on the earwig.

“Fifteen minutes, Mr. Reese.” Finch rolls back the chair and climbs to his feet. Bracing his hands on his lower back, he stretches carefully, emerald waistcoat tight against his stomach. “Better hurry if you’re going to walk.”

“Maybe you should join me. It’s not good to spend all day sitting down at your age.”

Abruptly, Finch stops his stretch, looking down at him with furrowed brow. “It’s also not very good for a man of _your_ age to go around all day dodging bullets,” he bites, and then, more quietly, more seriously, “but I thought that went without saying.”

From any other man, the tone would carry the hint of a threat on it, in its lowness and scrutiny. But on Finch, this is just another quirk of his language, like the way each noun in German has a nearly useless gendered article. It serves no purpose other than to obfuscate, but the challenge of it is just another handhold for Reese to carry himself up to the next stage in the long game of translating Finch’s personality.

“Glad to know you care, Finch.” Reese lets a little heaviness seep into it, nearly unconsciously; an illusion of the unshifting light that makes the spines of the books around them seem unchanging until you look up and gradually realize the cast of light is now orange from street lamps instead of blue from ambient sun.

They both pause in their movements. Reese has one arm half-slung into his coat, and Finch is re-shelving the book Reese had pulled down earlier. He slides the book the rest of the way home. “Try not to tarry on your way back. Last time, the food was a bit lukewarm.”

Reese hides his smile in his upturned collar.

 

Aside from his encyclopedic knowledge of hand guns, rifles, shotguns, and all matter of semi-automatic, automatic, artillery and projectile weapons, one additional skill Reese picked up in the CIA was a deadly proficiency in the art of handling chopsticks. He had assimilated the finicky movements necessary to balance the equally finicky food from countless stakeouts, long nights spent roaming dark streets and snagging quick carbohydrates from food carts, eating on the go and in dingy hostels.

Reese fancies he could successfully consume lo mein with his chopsticks while hanging upside down, but Finch—Finch could use chopsticks to eat rice, upside down, in artificial gravity, while coding an app to hack the International Space Station’s antenna array.

Eyes following the cheap wood, Reese asks, “Where did you learn to do that?”

“What? Eat?” Demonstrating, Finch pops a piece of broccoli into his mouth. They have their feast spread out before them on a table in one of the side rooms—they’d done the math on seven takeout boxes, two keyboards, and six monitors, reaching a result that added up to the desk being too cramped. Reese clicks his own chopsticks in midair to clarify his question.

“I am simply fond of takeout and not so fond of dishes.”

“Sure you never spent any time in Tokyo?”

A blank look.

“Shanghai? Indonesian sub-continent?”

The blank look continues.

“Just checking.”

“After all this time, your inept attempts to draw me out on the topic of my past still have no improved. Mind you, I can’t say I’m complaining.”

From the warm haze of a room filled with the smell of good food—still a novelty he savors, after starvation at both the hands of the CIA and the merciless streets of New York City—Reese lifts his head and thoughtfully swallows his mouthful. Finch is seated across from him and filling the room in a different way; the way that feet fill shoes and books fill shelves and paintings fill frames.

Reese thinks of how Finch raises an eyebrow to express incredulity and the way his eyes go wide when he’s frightened, and the way his mouth can seem so very small when he’s nervous. He thinks of the way those same wide, frightened eyes can pierce your very soul when he chooses to turn them on you in such a way. He thinks of the slack trust in his face when he’d been under the effects of Jordan Hester’s drugs. He thinks of Fucso’s thus-far-unfruitful attempts to follow him to his home.

“That’s alright, Finch. I know enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I wrote during my S1 rewatch and decided to clean up and post while I work on another longer Rinch au. Gotta love and miss those (relatively) angst-free early days!


End file.
